Provinces without bicycle helmet laws 'atrocious', researcher says

WINNIPEG - Provincial governments should force anyone riding a bicycle to wear a helmet, says the co-author of a new report that found helmet use varies greatly across Canada.
"I mean, it's atrocious that in 2010, every province does not have some sort of helmet legislation," said Ryan Zarychanski, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba. "Clearly, helmet legislation works and clearly it reduces serious head injuries and facial lacerations."
Zarychanski and three other researchers at the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa compared 2005 helmet use figures involving more than 4,600 respondents in three provinces with very different rules for cyclists.
Helmets were worn by 73.2 per cent of respondents in Nova Scotia, where helmet use is mandatory for everyone. The rate was just 40.6 per cent in Ontario, where helmets are mandatory for young people only, and a mere 26.9 in Saskatchewan, where there is no bicycle helmet law.
The study, published in the August edition of the Injury Prevention Journal, also found that children were less likely to wear helmets if adults did not have to.
Fewer than half of underage respondents in Ontario said they used helmets, even though they were required by law. In Nova Scotia, the rate for children was 77.5 per cent.
"We hypothesize that this is due to the absence of role-modelling from adults," Zarychanski said Tuesday.
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Newfoundland have no helmets laws for cyclists. Ontario and Alberta require helmets for people under 18 years of age, while Nova Scotia, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island require everyone to don a helmet while on a bicycle.
Manitoba's NDP government has long faced calls to make helmets mandatory. The third-party Liberals have tried and failed to pass a private member's bill to that effect.
The province's medical association has also called for a helmet law.
"There is plenty of evidence showing that helmet use goes up when such laws are introduced while head injury hospitalization drops by as much as 45 per cent," reads a post on Doctors Manitoba's health promotion web site.
But the government has instead opted to keep helmet use optional, and has tried to encourage helmet use through promotional campaigns and by offering subsidized helmets that cost as little as $10.
"We're not ruling out helmet legislation ... but we also are looking at and discussing with other provinces to see how their legislation moved forward, how they implemented it, and the pros and cons in each case," Manitoba Healthy Living Minister Jim Rondeau said.
"Right now, we're still working with the carrot approach."
Critics of helmet laws have argued that making helmets mandatory might discourage people from cycling. But the study found bicycle use remained constant in Alberta and Prince Edward Island after those provinces adopted helmet laws in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

Source:By: Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press Winnipeg Free Press August 10, 2010